RETENTION NOT UPTAKE BLAMED FOR MALE RULE

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Some of the City’s most formidable faces gathered on Friday to discuss the plight of women in business. The panel, held the day after International Women’s Day, focussed on “the disappearance of talented women from the management pipeline of British companies,” putting the low number of women in boardrooms down to a problem of retention rather than uptake. Aquitude chief Christina Ioannidis said companies waste as much as £15m per 10,000 employees each year from losing staff. “It just doesn’t make business sense,” commented panel chair Denise Jagger, a partner at Eversheds, predicting “a mighty economic penalty for businesses to pay down the line.” The event’s 200 attendees also heard from Laura Liswood, a senior advisor at Goldman Sachs; GE Capital Direct’s chairman Noel Harwerth; Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe, Google’s head of diversity and inclusion; and Deutsche Bank’s MD of diversity Eileen Taylor.